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I've noticed that people who are pointing out the author's many errors are basing their commentaries on the contents of the article. They're dealing with the error of his positions.
However, I haven't seen anyone address the misdirection the author employs. By this I mean that the author is not accurately representing the opposition. You can see it in his topic headings, for example: "Only communist economies rely on state violence." His less-than-clever use of language serves to obfuscate the issue. Out of 7 words in this sentence, four of them are deceptively employed.
1) "Only:" which sets up an false exclusivity that few, if anyone, have actually postulated. Those who oppose communism do not suggest that "only" communism does this.
2) "Economies:" It is not the economic status at issue, it is the wielding of power by tyrannical leaders facilitated by the centralization of power.
3) "Rely:" This suggests that there must be a focus upon certain techniques, which artificially narrows the situation to exclude communistic governments that might only occasionally use violence.
4) "Violence:" Oppression takes many forms, of which violence is only one. Confiscation of wealth and property, denial of opportunity, threats and intimidation, loss of privacy, loss of freedom of movement, lack of free speech, lack of choice, are all features of communism that do not require physical violence.So as you read we will make note of the author's tendency to frame things deceptively in order to make his point.
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As the commentary around the recent deaths of Nelson Mandela, Amiri Baraka and Pete Seeger made abundantly clear, most of what Americans think they know about capitalism and communism is arrant nonsense. ("Arrant:" utter, complete, total, unmitigated. In other words, what most Americans believe is apparently beyond simple ignorance. The author is suggesting it reaches heights of stupidity never before achieved. This, of course, is an astoundingly pompous claim, reeking of elitism and snotty superiority.)
This is not surprising, given our country’s history of Red Scares designed to impress that anti-capitalism is tantamount to treason. In 2014, though, we are too far removed from the Cold War-era threat of thermonuclear annihilation to continue without taking stock of the hype we’ve been made, despite Harry Allen’s famous injunction, to believe. So, here are seven bogus claims people (People? Who has made these claims?)
make about communism and capitalism.
1. Only communist economies rely on state violence.
Obviously, no private equity baron (The author smoke screens the issue by using the "baron" referent, an attempt to characterize capitalism by the actions of thieves and swindlers. We must note that those who steal, cheat, and lie are violators of capitalism, not examples of it.)
worth his weight in leveraged buyouts will ever part willingly with his fortune, and any attempt to achieve economic justice (like taxation) (Of course not "willingly," which apparently that the unwilling confiscation of someone's wealth is perfectly ok.
Here is a loaded phrase, "economic justice." In the strange world of the leftist mind, justice is achieved by taking money that belongs to one person and giving it to another who did not earn it. I very much doubt that the rightful owner considers this just.)
will encounter stiff opposition from the ownership class. (Another quasi-clever use of language. There is no such thing as an "ownership class" except for those who believe in Marxist doctrine. "An "ownership class" is simply individuals who own things, like land, houses, businesses, or even a cell phone.
This is known as agitprop, a time-honored leftist technique stolen right from the politburo.)
But state violence (like taxation) (Remember the title of this subsection, Only communist economies rely on state violence? When one reads a title like this, one expects a discussion of actual physical violence resulting in mass deaths. The author, however, substitutes taxation as the method of violence, thus placing any and every government into a single, violence-perpetrating category.)
is inherent in every set of property rights a government can conceivably adopt – including those that allowed the aforementioned hypothetical baron to amass said fortune. (Really, this sentence makes no sense. Governments do not "adopt" property rights, and property rights do not enable robber barons. But more to the point, we are one paragraph into the author's presentation, and have found multiple egregious misrepresentations, biases, and misleading characterizations. This is a long article. I hope he improves.)
In capitalism, competing ownership claims are settled by the state’s willingness to use violence to exclude all but one claimant. (No, capitalism only requires the state to enforce the law, including contracts. No violence is required.
There is no "claimant," there is only the rightful owner.)
If I lay claim to one of David Koch’s mansions, (Ironic. It is the Left that thinks government has a legal claim to the property of others, based on the Left's idea of fairness and justice, and it will happily use the coercive power of government to execute those claims.
Notice also the use of language. To "claim" something is to assert ownership. The author is assuming capitalism, despite his best efforts to disavow it.)
libertarian that he is, he’s going to rely on big government and its guns to set me right. (No, Mr. Koch only expects that government [which does not have to be big] to properly enforce his pre-existent property rights against thieves and usurpers, like the author.
It is the Left that relies on Big Government to confiscate Mr. Koch's property from him and redistribute it.)
He owns that mansion because the state says he does and threatens to imprison anyone who disagrees. (No, he owns the mansion, and all his property, because he has legal and moral claim to it. His property is the fruit of his labor.
The state does not say he owns his property, for government does not grant property rights. It only acknowledges ownership. Government violate property rights or secure them.)
Where there isn’t a state, (Anarchy, an example of which does not exist. The absence of law is a theoretical state that cannot exist as a system.)
whoever has the most violent power determines who gets the stuff, be that a warlord, a knight, the mafia or a gang of cowboys in the Wild West. (All of these examples are manifestations of a system of rules of behavior. They are not anarchist.)
Either by vigilantes or the state, property rights rely on violence. (We have already seen that this isn't true.)
This is true both of personal possessions and private property, but it is important not to confuse the two. Property implies not a good, but a title – deeds, contracts, stocks, bonds, mortgages. (No, these contracts and statements of ownership are representations of actual property rights, agreed to by all involved parties, and carry legal weight.
They frequently express how property is going to be transferred, encumbered, or established. Contracts in particular are private agreements, requiring the involvement of government only when legally executed provisions are violated.)
When Marxists talk of collectivizing ownership claims on land or “the means of production,” we are in the realm of property; when Fox Business Channel hosts move to confiscate my tie, we are in the realm of personal possessions. (We shall not permit the author to redefine terms. "Property" is
- that which a person owns; the possession or possessions of a particular owner
- goods, land, etc., considered as possessions
- a piece of land or real estate
- ownership; right of possession, enjoyment, or disposal of anything, especially of something tangible
- something at the disposal of a person, a group of persons, or the community or public
Communism necessarily distributes property universally, (Is this really true? Theoretically, maybe, but in actual observed practice there are the favored people with power living luxurious lives and there are the average joes who receive the distribution as willed by the ruling class. There is no such thing as property distributed universally.)
but, at least as far as this communist is concerned, can still allow you to keep your smartphone. ("Can?" "Allow?" The author's language betrays him. See, in his scenario government ascertains what someone is "allowed" to keep. Can you imagine that we should accept the author's distinction and cede our ownership to government?
A government with the power to decide what is property and what are possessions can easily change its definitions. Which is the reason communism and atrocities go hand in hand. A government with the power to decide what you're allowed to possess can draw that line anywhere. After all, what can you do to oppose it?
Indeed, this level of power can decide you are not allowed to possess your life.)
Deal? (No deal.)
2. Capitalist economies are based on free exchange.
The mirror-image of the “oppressive communism” myth (Myth? Unproven assertion.)
is the “liberatory capitalism” one. (Which we shall also deem a myth.)
The idea that we’re all going around making free choices all the time in an abundant market where everyone’s needs get met is patently belied by the lived experience of hundreds of millions of people. (The author seems to be suggesting that because there are people who aren't prospering that it is the fault of capitalism. And they number in the "hundreds of millions." Where? In Kenya? Mongolia? Who are these people, exactly?
We also need to note that there is no economic system that guarantees "everyone's needs get met." Capitalism doesn't require it, and communism promises it but can't deliver. It is a pipe dream, an unreality. But such rhetoric is quite conveneint to rile up the proletariat in envy, so as to throw off the bourgeois.)
Most find ourselves constantly stuck between competing pressures and therefore stressed out, exhausted, lonely, and in search of meaning. — as though we’re not in control of our lives. ("Most?" Unproven assertion. But let's concede his statement for a moment. He's describing a condition of humanity that exists apart from economics and politics. The tacit assumption he makes is that communism relieves stress, exhaustion, loneliness, and provides meaning and control of our lives. But he does not back that up, preferring to infer that capitalism uniquely sucks the humanity out of us.
The other problem he doesn't account for is that there isn't a capitalistic system on the face of the earth. They are all co-opted by communism/socialism to some degree or another. We could just as easily assert that the encroachment of totalitarian communistic/socialistic tendencies fostered by centralizing government power is causing people to be stressed, exhausted, and lonely.)
We aren’t; the market is. If you don’t think so, try and exit “the market.” (This is laughable. Try exiting communism.
Being in control is much more a possibility in an economic system where government does not interfere in your private choices. It's astonishing that the author can assert that government has the power to decide to "allow" you to have a smartphone somehow fosters your ability to control your life!
In addition, "the market" is not a political system, it is quite simply activity. People voluntarily exchanging things of value. Suggesting that one should try exiting "the market" is akin to suggesting that one should free themselves from the atmosphere. "The market" is human behavior. It's human expressions, the natural way we behave.
Communism violates human nature.)
The origin of capitalism was depriving British peasants of their access to land (seizure of property, you might call it), and therefore their means of subsistence, making them dependent on the market for their survival. (That is, someone was abrogating the property rights of someone else, which is a violation of capitalism. Ironically, the author has just described the seizure of "the means of production" by a central power.)
Once propertyless, they were forced to flock to the dreck, drink and disease of slum-ridden cities to sell the only thing they had – their capacity to use their brains and muscles to work – or die. Just like them, the vast majority of people today are deprived of access to the resources we need to flourish, though they exist in abundant quantities, so as to force us to work for a boss who is trying to get rich by paying us less and working us harder. (None of this has to do with capitalism. But further, no one is deprived of a right to access resources, because there is no such right. This is simply a clever way to suggest that SOMEONE ELSE'S resources ought to be yours to access.)
Even that boss (the apparent victor in the “free exchange”) isn’t free: the market places imperatives on the ownership class to relentlessly accumulate wealth and develop the forces of production or else fail. Capitalists are compelled to support oppressive regimes and wreck the planet, as a matter of business, even as they protest good personal intentions. (Nothing but a regurgitation of marxist doctrine. The author, polluted by the failed theories of a bygone era, cannot see past his limited worldview. There is no "victor" in free exchange, because free exchange is a voluntary transaction between parties who exchange value.
Because people are different in intelligence, skill, work ethic, education, and attitudes, some of them are better at leveraging their efforts and talent. They justly benefit from their superior skills and are rewarded for them. This is perfectly right and proper.
Capitalists are not "compelled to support oppressive regimes," or any regimes at all. Capitalism simply requires a government that punishes unfair dealing, misrepresentation, theft, and other violations of capitalism.)
And that’s just the principle of the system. The US’s particular brand of capitalism required exterminating a continent’s worth of indigenous people and enslaving millions of kidnapped Africans. (The tunnel vision here is palpable. The conquering force of communism has overrun nations, massacred tens of millions, and left people destitute and starving.
And none of the author's cited atrocities have anything to do with capitalism. They have everything to do with power-hungry, greedy and immoral people unrestrained by God or man.)
And all the capitalist industry was only possible because white women, considered the property of their fathers and husbands, were performing the invisible tasks of child-rearing and housework, without remuneration. Three cheers for free exchange. (Having misrepresented the nature of free exchange, the author now extends certain economic and cultural practices into an indictment of America for its failures. This is a breath taking leap in illogic, and an especially vapid assertion, given the long history of oppression of the feudal system, monarchies, and various tyrants, great and small, that perforate history with atrocities unimaginable.)
3. Communism killed 110 million* people for resisting dispossession.
(Notice how the author artificially restricts the category to those who were"resisting dispossession." He then sets out to refute his strawman, happily using sarcasm, misdirection, and obfuscation to establish his false premise.)
*The number cited is as consistent as it is rooted in sound research; i.e., not.
Greg Gutfeld, one of the hosts of Fox News’ “The Five” and a historical scholar of zero renown, (Um, yeah. Was Mr. Gutfeld claiming to be a historical scholar? And what are the author's credentials?)
recently advanced the position that “only the threat of death can prop up a left-wing dream, because no one in their right mind would volunteer for this crap. Hence, 110 million dead.” In declaring this, Gutfeld and his ilk insult the suffering of the millions of people who died under Stalin, Mao, and other 20th Century Communist dictators. Making up a big-sounding number of people and chalking their deaths up to some abstract “communism” is no way to enact a humanistic commitment to victims of human rights atrocities. (Whaaa? The author imposes an objective upon Mr. Gutfeld, that he should be "enacting a humanistic commitment," whatever that means. In other words, criticizing communism by noticing tens of millions of people died because of it means you are required to pursue some sort of approved "humanistic commitment." If that makes no sense to you, welcome to the club.
The author is outraged, but why? Is it because the claim is largely true? He doesn't refute the number, he complains about the context. That's a ham-fisted diversion.)
For one thing, a large number of the people killed under Soviet communism weren’t the kulaks everyone pretends to care about but themselves communists. Stalin, in his paranoid cruelty, not only had Russian revolutionary leaders assassinated and executed, but indeed exterminated entire communist parties. (Notice the utility of his arbitrary delineation. He now gets to exclude millions of deaths perpetrated by the communists regime because they are outside the category. For some reason, they don't count as an atrocity.)
These people weren’t resisting having their property collectivized; they were committed to collectivizing property. (So what? They were executed by communism. That's the relevant point!)
It is also worth remembering that the Soviets had to fight a revolutionary war – against, among others, the US – which, as the American Revolution is enough to show, doesn’t mainly consist of group hugs. (Notice the attempt at moral equivalency. Apparently the moral missteps of America justifies or mitigates the communist penchant for dealing with their political enemies in the most vile ways possible.)
They also faced (and heroically defeated) the Nazis, who were not an ocean away, but right on their doorstep. (So heroic. Yes, since they fought the Nazis, we don't have to pay attention to the many millions they killed for unrelated reasons.
Yes, this is the thinking of the enlightened leftist mind.)
So much for the USSR. The most horrifying episode in 20th Century official Communism was the Great Chinese Famine, its death toll difficult to identify, but surely in the tens of millions. Several factors evidently contributed to this atrocity, but central to it was Mao’s “Great Leap Forward,” a disastrous combination of applied pseudoscience, stat-juking, and political persecution designed to transform China into an industrial superpower in the blink of an eye. The experiment’s results were extremely grim, but to claim that the victims died because they, in their right minds, would not volunteer for “a left-wing dream” is ludicrous. (A claim no one except the author has made. Mr. Gutfeld was starkly clear that no one would volunteer for inclusion in a system that has such a resume of death and torture. This has nothing to do with the motivations of those who died. It has to do with people like the author who are happy to throw their hat in today with a system of thought derived from a murderous regime.)
Famine is not a uniquely “left-wing” problem. (Which no one has claimed.)
4. Capitalist governments don’t commit human rights atrocities.
(Which no one has claimed. But more pertinent, does this somehow mitigate communism's sorry track record?)
Whatever one’s assessment of the crimes committed by Communist leaders, it is unwise for capitalism’s cheerleaders to play the body-count game, because if people like me have to account for the gulag and the Great Sparrow campaign, they’ll have to account for the slave trade, indigenous extermination, “Late Victorian Holocausts” and every war, genocide and massacre carried out by the US and its proxies in the effort to defeat communism. Since the pro-capitalist set cares so deeply for the suffering of the Russian and Chinese masses, perhaps they’ll even want to account for the millions of deaths resulting from those countries’ transitions to capitalism. (This is what passes for brilliant thinking on the Left. They point to the bad behavior of others as if it excuses the perpetration of unimaginable horrors by communism.)
It should be intuitive that capitalism, which glorifies rapid growth amidst ruthless competition, (It does? Reference, please.)
would produce great acts of violence and deprivation, but somehow its defenders are convinced that it is always and everywhere a force for righteousness and liberation. ("Always and everywhere?" Again, note how he characterizes the opposition. I doubt anyone believes this "always and everywhere" thing, but it looks good on the word processor.
Capitalism isn't righteous, noble, or liberating. It simply is. It's what people do when not coerced by a power. It's what people choose unless someone else is making their choices. The author wants someone else to make peoples' choices.)
Let them try to convince the tens of millions of people who die of malnutrition every year because the free market is incapable of engineering a situation in which less than half of the world’s food is thrown away. (This is apparently capitalism's fault, as if communism provided a bounty of food, distributed the world over. If you follow the author's malnutrition link, you will not find a single capitalist country on the list of starving nations. Hmmm.
But notice the word "engineering." "Engineering" is what communists do. They are control freaks and oppressors who are convinced that people cannot be trusted to do the right thing, thus the need smarter people like the author to "allocate" resources.
Communists "engineer." Capitalism flows, unless interrupted by tyrants and criminals.)
The 100 million deaths that are perhaps most important to focus on right now are the ones that international human rights organization DARA projected will die climate-borne deaths between 2012 and 2030. 100 million more will follow those, and they will not take 18 years to die. Famine like the human species has never known is in the offing because the free market does not price carbon and oil-extracting capitalist firms have, since the collapse of the USSR, become sovereigns of their own. The most virulent anti-communists have a very handy, if morally disgraceful, way of treating this mass extinction event: they deny that it’s happening. (More moral equivalence. "Pay no attention to what happened to millions of people. Look over there at that atrocity that has nothing to do with the topic at hand." His avoidance techniques are getting tiring. Regardless of what other nations do and why, the fact remains that communism perpetrated untold horrors on millions of people.
And by the way, what has been the environmental record of the communists of history?)
5. 21st Century American communism would resemble 20th century Soviet and Chinese horrors.
(I have never seen this point offered by any capitalist or conservative. But like every bullet point offered up to this point, and every subsequent bullet point offered later, the author is unable to articulate a position some capitalist actually believes. He prefers to twist, infer, and then mask his own ideology in an intricate web of accusations, misrepresentations, and outright fictions. This is simply agitprop.)
Before their revolutions, Russia and China were pre-industrial, agricultural, largely illiterate societies whose masses were peasants spread out over truly vast expanses of land. In the United States today, robots make robots, and less than 2% of population works in agriculture. These two states of affairs are incalculably dissimilar. (And quite irrelevant.)
The simple invocation of the former therefore has no value as an argument about the future of the American economy.
For me, communism is an aspiration, not an immediately achievable state. (We would suggest it is not achievable at all, but that's just us, grounded in reality.)
It, like democracy and libertarianism, is utopian in that it constantly strives toward an ideal, (Yes, communism is a benign system that is just like every other system, striving toward a utopian idea. Is this satire?)
in its case the non-ownership of everything and the treatment of everything – including culture, people’s time, the very act of caring, and so forth – as dignified and inherently valuable rather than as commodities that can be priced for exchange. (The smokescreen continues. "Communism is pink unicorns and rainbows, you see. Communism is caring and loving and ennobling. You see, you just don't understand. You're wrong about communism. You think that communism is about violent overthrow and atrocities, but it's not. No, see, those things aren't communism."
So we who are in the real world look through history and to the nations in the world today to find a single example of this beautiful communism. We cast our gaze on Cuba, China, Russia, North Korea, and Vietnam, looking for happy, self-actualized people who have their every need met in bounteous fashion.
We consider the art coming from North Korea, the grand philosophers of Cuba, the many pacifists of Russia, and the innovation and great minds of science produced by Vietnam, and we marvel. We marvel because they are nowhere to be seen. We marvel because of the incredible lack of contribution to any of the arts or sciences or culture or religion or music from the communist world.
It's not there because it can't be there. Culture, art, and religion all require freedom of thought. These things challenge the boundaries and violate the status quo. Communism cannot allow that.)
Steps towards that state of affairs needn’t include anything as scary as the wholesale and immediate abolition of markets (Of course not. Communism requires a robust capitalistic society to fund it.)
(after all, markets predate capitalism by several millennia and communists love a good farmer’s market). Rather, I contend they can even include reforms with support among broadly ideologically divergent parties. (That is, the goal remains the goal, even if incrementally achieved. Happily, the tyrants will still "allow" farmer's markets. How comforting. That is, if there's anything in them to sell.)
Given the technological, material, and social advances of the last century, we could expect an approach to communism beginning here and now to be far more open, humane, democratic, participatory and egalitarian than the Russian and Chinese attempts managed. (He has no basis for such an expectation. He apparently thinks that communism failed every previous time because it simply wasn't properly implemented. But the problem isn't with the implementation, or the people in charge of it, or the unfortunate missteps that resulted in wholesale massacre. No, he's absolutely sure it can work given the right environment.
But communism can't work because it's communism. Communism violates human nature. It also trusts people with power to do the right thing. It invests those people people in power with the ability to control the economic forces resulting from billions of transactions by hundreds of millions of people.
But there is no reason to expect such a thing could happen.
No, communism fails because it must. It diagnoses the wrong problem and so provides the wrong solution, a solution that cannot work because people are not like what communism thinks they are.)
I’d even argue it would be easier now than it was then to construct a set of social relations based on fellowship and mutual aid (as distinct from capitalism’s, which are characterized by competition and exclusion) such as would be necessary to allow for the eventual “withering away of the state” that libertarians fetishize, without replaying the Middle Ages (only this time with drones and metadata).
6. Communism fosters uniformity.
Apparently, lots of people are unable to distinguish equality from homogeneity. Perhaps this derives from the tendency of people in capitalist societies to view themselves primarily as consumers: the dystopic fantasy is a supermarket wherein one state-owned brand of food is available for all items, and it’s all in red packaging with yellow letters.
But people do a lot more than consume. One thing we do a huge amount of is work (or, for millions of unemployed Americans, try to and are not allowed). Communism envisions a time beyond work, when people are free, as Marx wrote, “to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner… without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.” In that way, communism is based on the total opposite of uniformity: tremendous diversity, not just among people, but even with in a single person’s “occupation.”
That so many great artists and writers have been Marxists suggest that the production of culture in such a society would breed tremendous individuality and offer superior avenues for expression. (Non sequitur. Great people, talented people, creative people do not arise because of a political system.)
Those artists and writers might have thought of communism as “an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all,” but you might want to consider it an actual instantiation of universal access to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
You won’t even notice the red packaging with yellow letters!
7. Capitalism fosters individuality.
Instead of allowing all people to follow their entrepreneurial spirit into the endeavors that fulfill them, capitalism applauds the small number of entrepreneurs who capture large portions of mass markets. This requires producing things on a mass scale, which imposes a double-uniformity on society: tons and tons of people all purchase the same products, and tons and tons of people all perform the same labor. Such individuality as flourishes amid this system is often extremely superficial.
Have you seen the suburban residential developments that the housing boom shat out all over this country? Have you seen the grey-paneled cubicles, bathed in fluorescent light, clustered in “office parks” so indistinct as to be disorienting? Have you seen the strip malls and service areas and sitcoms? Our ability to purchase products from competing capitalist firms has not produced an optimally various and interesting society.
As a matter of fact, most of the greatest art under capitalism has always come from people who are oppressed and alienated (see: the blues, jazz, rock & roll, and hip-hop). Then, thanks to capitalism, it is homogenized, marketed, and milked for all its value by the “entrepreneurs” sitting at the top of the heap, stroking their satiated flanks in admiration of themselves for getting everyone beneath them to believe that we are free.
(As you've noted, I stopped my commentary. Propagandic bilge always gets wearying. And the communists are extremely given to promulgate propaganda. It come in barrages, with half formed accusations, wide generalizations, deliberate misrepresentations, and various and sundry false facts, clever fictions, and the relating of half-remembered history twisted and formed to advance the communist's agenda.
The author refutes"misconceptions" no one has offered, correlates unrelated issues, and clumsily shifts blame to bogeymen for no other reason than to obscure the manifest failures of a economic system that has never succeeded in doing anything other than effecting the execution of millions of unfortunate souls. Upon that basis the author thinks is worth another try.)
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